Removing lime ash flooring

[Cah86]

Hi there all

My partner and I have fallen in love with an old cottage (it’s actually three super small cottages knitted together) that we are considering buying.
The oldest part is the front and the two upstairs rooms have lime ash flooring - it’s horrible! Deflection all over the place, I’m not sure any furniture could sit comfortably in either of the rooms. The carpet looks like a series of waves. Here’s the catch…. It’s grade ll listed, so my question is,
1. Could this flooring be removed? What’s the likelihood it would be allowed?
2. Could it be replaced with reclaimed floorboards?
3. Does anyone have experience of this process
We are pretty good at diy as we just renovated a Victorian property so pulling up a floor doesn’t worry us, it’s the listed bit that does as i wouldn’t want to buy if two rooms are redundant.
Thank you!

 

[Kearn]

Absolutely not. No CO would ever agree to such a damaging act. Limeash floors are rather rare, and very important. A property is lucky to have them and the owners should feel the same way. They should be maintained and conserved.

If wobbly floors are the biggest concern with an old property, it might be time to reconsider your search era for something more recent. An old building will throw up many frustrating and costly challenges in its continual upkeep that are required, but that is the role as a custodian of an historic structure.

Pulling up floors in old buildings should worry you. It is not something that should be done.

 

[Kearn]

https://www.spab.org.uk/sites/default/files/SPAB_Gypsum_Plaster_Floors_Edn_01_Rev_00.pdf

 

[Janela]

Our first floor has very old wattle and daub floors on chestnut laths covered with small terracotta tiles - they are very very uneven, isn't that part of the charm of an ancient building.
We use slivers of wood under the furniture feet to get them level. It is easily adjustable and doesn't really show. (cardboard is not so good as it compresses over time)
We have even cut the back feet down on a piece of furniture in our bathroom as the floor slopes a good 12cm into the middle.

 

[Cah86]

Absolutely not. No CO would ever agree to such a damaging act. Limeash floors are rather rare, and very important. A property is lucky to have them and the owners should feel the same way. They should be maintained and conserved.

If wobbly floors are the biggest concern with an old property, it might be time to reconsider your search era for something more recent. An old building will throw up many frustrating and costly challenges in its continual upkeep that are required, but that is the role as a custodian of an historic structure.

Pulling up floors in old buildings should worry you. It is not something that should be done.

That’s what I thought the rest of the house is also very wobbly (wonky door and window frames, uneven floors, low ceilings with patched beams, uneven quarry tiles) but all quite lovely and definitely part of the charm. It’s just the two rooms that feel a bit too far gone (I get adding wood slithers to furniture feet or trimming them down). The previous owner lived alone and just ignored these rooms. Ok, thank you for feedback maybe this one isn’t the one for us….

 

[jamest]

I don't know anything much about lime ash floors, but surely there must be a way of restoring them to a useable condition without ripping them out.

What concerns me is that someone will buy that place and simply rip everything out that they don't like/can't live with without even considering the listing and no one will ever be any the wiser. I've looked around a lot of listed buildings in my area and there is no way that consent would (or should) have been given to many of the 'upgrades' that recent owners have made. When you look up the records, sure enough, there is no evidence of consent. It's true of my own house, but luckily nothing of historical interest has suffered.

If you've fallen in love with the place, buy it and preserve it - even if that means restoring the lime ash floors.

 

[Cah86]

I don't know anything much about lime ash floors, but surely there must be a way of restoring them to a useable condition without ripping them out.

What concerns me is that someone will buy that place and simply rip everything out that they don't like/can't live with without even considering the listing and no one will ever be any the wiser. I've looked around a lot of listed buildings in my area and there is no way that consent would (or should) have been given to many of the 'upgrades' that recent owners have made. When you look up the records, sure enough, there is no evidence of consent. It's true of my own house, but luckily nothing of historical interest has suffered.

If you've fallen in love with the place, buy it and preserve it - even if that means restoring the lime ash floors.

Yes absolutely, we have spoken with the agent and contacted the local CO. I think our main concern is that it hasn’t been properly maintained and has been bodge repaired time and time again over the years leaving it in very poor condition (under layers or carpet) and it has impacted the beams below. Just to give you more context most of the other rooms are wood effect laminate glue onto floorboards and two chimneys have been blocked up to feature double sockets in them

I don’t have an issue with this type of flooring but it’s getting the balance right between preservation cost of repairs and practical living.

Thanks again for the responses all

 

[Kearn]

I don't know anything much about lime ash floors, but surely there must be a way of restoring them to a useable condition without ripping them out.

What concerns me is that someone will buy that place and simply rip everything out that they don't like/can't live with without even considering the listing and no one will ever be any the wiser. I've looked around a lot of listed buildings in my area and there is no way that consent would (or should) have been given to many of the 'upgrades' that recent owners have made. When you look up the records, sure enough, there is no evidence of consent. It's true of my own house, but luckily nothing of historical interest has suffered.

If you've fallen in love with the place, buy it and preserve it - even if that means restoring the lime ash floors.

Restoring them is quite the specialist job by all accounts, and more challenging - very slow before the floor is good to go again, so means putting rooms out of action for a while. But I believe restoring is to repairs cracks/missing sections, not to increase thickness to level them out. They won’t be more than a set thickness, due to the weight on the reed/lath which in turn dictates the profile.

 

[Kearn]

We use small tiles as packers to lift furniture feet. Either samples, or the individual ones you can buy in any of the usual big box outlets. 4 or 5inches square is very discrete.

 

[philpjuk100]

Is lime ash the same as gypsum plaster? We have a lime ash floor to our attic laid on reeds ( we back on to the Trent ) it seems to be between six and nine inches thick and when we had the house surveyed we were told that the two inches of "cosywrap" on top contributed little to the insulation. I thought that lime ash floors were made by mixing coal ash and the scrapings from the lime kiln and allowing them to absorb moisture from the atmosphere. The coal ash for ours probably came from the "gas house" next door but three which had a mooring for coal barges and supplied the local hall with gas and the remains of the lime kiln are just beyond this. Ours is also too "bumpy" for furniture and has a few large cracks in it.

 

[Kearn]

Is lime ash the same as gypsum plaster? We have a lime ash floor to our attic laid on reeds ( we back on to the Trent ) it seems to be between six and nine inches thick and when we had the house surveyed we were told that the two inches of "cosywrap" on top contributed little to the insulation. I thought that lime ash floors were made by mixing coal ash and the scrapings from the lime kiln and allowing them to absorb moisture from the atmosphere. The coal ash for ours probably came from the "gas house" next door but three which had a mooring for coal barges and supplied the local hall with gas and the remains of the lime kiln are just beyond this. Ours is also too "bumpy" for furniture and has a few large cracks in it.

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They are lovely though. The SPAB doc I posted a link too further above is quite informative - think there was a bit of vernacular approach to ingredients, a bit like old line plaster/daub. But yes, gypsum floors are similar if not another name I believe.

 

[Cubist]

I would echo @jamest and never say die. There are many ways to skin the cat and sometimes even a little compromise can reap the desired results. In the master bedroom here we were faced with a floor that undulated alarmingly and varied in relative heights by as much as 200mm. For the first 9 years of our stewardship our bed rested on four wooden blocks of wildly different heights at each corner to ensure we never fell out of it and each of the other vital furnishings stood on custom home made wooden plinths.

When I finally got around to levelling the floor our local CO was extremely helpful and agreed that my proposed use of more modern materials was vital and that the final visible finish would be perfectly acceptable. He, fortunately, was not a Tatar that insisted that this place should be a museum piece and that its long term preservation heavily depended on ensuring its use as a viable home. There are some who, given the chance, will go the other way but 'you just don't know until you ask'.

 

[Cah86]

I would echo @jamest and never say die. There are many ways to skin the cat and sometimes even a little compromise can reap the desired results. In the master bedroom here we were faced with a floor that undulated alarmingly and varied in relative heights by as much as 200mm. For the first 9 years of our stewardship our bed rested on four wooden blocks of wildly different heights at each corner to ensure we never fell out of it and each of the other vital furnishings stood on custom home made wooden plinths.

When I finally got around to levelling the floor our local CO was extremely helpful and agreed that my proposed use of more modern materials was vital and that the final visible finish would be perfectly acceptable. He, fortunately, was not a Tatar that insisted that this place should be a museum piece and that its long term preservation heavily depended on ensuring its use as a viable home. There are some who, given the chance, will go the other way but 'you just don't know until you ask'.

This is exactly what I was hoping for, we do love the house but need to live practically as well. Do you mind sharing what materials you used? Thank you

 

[Cubist]

We didn't have anything like a Lime Ash floor just badly distorted wooden boards above some horizontally challenged joists. That said there should be some kind of joist structure supporting the Lime Ash can you confirm that conclusion? If so you may be able to adopt a solution similar to mine.